Honeymoon Excursion to SE Asia

Getting ready T-5hrs

After a long and tiring week we are packing for the Honeymoon trip to South East Asia. Trying to pack less and travel light. Going to warm places help on achieving this goal. My cousin Tammy has dropped us to SFO and it started to sink in that we would be gone for 17 days to the wonderland. We were flying Singapore Airlines which was the most affordable and direct way to get to Singapore. Having flown with Singapore on my Korea trip in the beginning of the year, I love their service and the quality of in flight entertainment. At the end of the day, we were going to clock in 15 hour non stop to Hong Kong. It really helped that our flight departed at 1am SF time. We were both able to sleep a good 6-7 hours before we started to watch synchronized movies. Blue valentine by Cate Blanchett was a good movie that was shot in San Francisco.

 Day 1 - Singapore After an hour lay over in Hong Kong we were on our way to Singapore. To be honest, I haven't done any research about this country ahead of time. Part of it was the fact that we only had total of less than 48 hours in there and also I wanted to leave it up to the moment to explore the city. Our first night we stayed at Peninsula Hotel right in downtown which is very convenient to walk around the Bay in Singapore. After dropping the bags we started to walk around the city at 85 degrees. This weather in November is pretty amazing to me. I heard that it gets a lot hotter and muggier in Singapore in the summer.

Our first stop was the Armenian Church in Singapore. The church was two blocks from hotel on Armenian Street and it was on a great site that was built by the Armenian community on 1836 which held 12 Armenians in Singapore at the time. The Sarkies Family (built Raffles Hotel) have done great to preserve the Church and it is used today by the Orthodox families on a regular Sunday service. I particularly liked the outside courtyard of the church where there was a great lush area with cemetery section and various religious monuments. After a month of getting married at an Armenian Church in San Francisco, it was great to pray in another Armenian Church on the other side of the world. Armos truly are truly everywhere :)

Our excursion of exploring the city continued at Clarke, fancy expat area near the financial district. We took a tiny boat trip that showed us the Marina Bay and Clarke area. After completing the tour we found ourselves at Persian-owned restaurant that served Hookah. Combining it with the mint tea, overlooking at the beautiful Marina Bay and the skyscrapers was relaxing as the sun was setting in SG. As our own batteries were quite low and the fact that we had a 6.15am pickup in the morning to head to Maleysia, we opted for a beer-and-snacks-in-the-hotel-room kinda a Saturday night. I had no doubt that in a few days when we stay at the crazy site of Marina Bay Sands Hotel, we'll have our own Saturday night on an actual Wednesday night!